Head to head · Decision models · October 2026 research run
Microsoft-Decision-1 vs Drex 1.5
Drex 1.5 scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Microsoft-Decision-1's 39 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do decision models.
Best decision models for AI agents · All 91 decisions comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Routing, classification, prioritisation and rubric checks over text, where a fixed set of options and a low price per token matter more than generated text.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
Public preview only. Microsoft's post gives no general availability date and states no licence for the hosted model
Drex 1.5 B
Best for Routing, triage and yes or no gates inside an agent, where the caller supplies the options and acts on the probabilities. Suited to hosted use at a low per-token price, or to open weights where the licence fits.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 80 against 30
- Schema & documentation, 88 against 43
- Agent ergonomics, 85 against 50
- Security & auth, 65 against 52
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 65 against 40
- Transparency & trust, 63 against 32
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
Watch for
The rank 1 claim comes from Nace's own run on Decision Index 0.3.1, and Drex is not on the public board for 0.3 or 0.2.1.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Microsoft-Decision-1 | Drex 1.5 | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 30 | 80 | Drex 1.5 +50 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 43 | 88 | Drex 1.5 +45 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 50 | 85 | Drex 1.5 +35 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 52 | 65 | Drex 1.5 +13 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 40 | Drex 1.5 +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 40 | 65 | Drex 1.5 +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 32 | 63 | Drex 1.5 +31 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| Total | E 39/100 | B 69.7/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Microsoft-Decision-1 | Drex 1.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | Microsoft | Nace AI, Inc. (Nace.AI) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for decision models | free | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Not stated. The announcement and OpenRouter's model page name no licence, and no weights repository was found. | Hosted API under the Nace AI Terms of Service, last updated 5 May 2026. Weights under the Nace AI Open RAIL-M licence (modified, version 1.0, October 2026), which is not an open-source licence. Businesses above $1 million in revenue or funding need a separate commercial licence, and competing products are excluded. The bundled code/kev package, derived from Jared Palmer's Kev (https://github.com/jaredpalmer/kev), and the GitHub repository are Apache-2.0, and the agent skill is MIT. |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-09-28 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | |
| Privacy policy last updated | ||
| Customer content may train models | ||
| Terms restrict automated access | ||
| Terms restrict benchmarking | ||
| Terms or service can change without notice | ||
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | ||
| Popularity | none | 318 npm/wk, 156 PyPI/wk |
Verdicts
Microsoft-Decision-1
Microsoft publishes $0.042 per million input tokens, with output free, and the model is callable through Microsoft Foundry and OpenRouter. It is in public preview. No licence, model-specific retention statement, rate limit or deprecation policy was found, and the Foundry route needs an Azure deployment and an Entra token. Latency and accuracy figures are Microsoft's claims.
Drex 1.5
The hosted endpoint has a public OpenAPI document, published limits and pinned model versions, at $0.05 per million input tokens with no output charge. The #1 under 10B claim rests on Nace's own run, since Drex is absent from both public boards. Weights carry Open RAIL-M, which requires a commercial licence above $1 million in revenue or funding.
Before you call either
Microsoft-Decision-1
- Use OpenRouter's Decisions method, not an OpenAI chat-completions SDK. OpenRouter says chat completions SDKs will not work with this model
- On Foundry, send the request to the deployment's /providers/microsoft/v1/systemone path with a Microsoft Entra token for https://cognitiveservices.azure.com/.default, not an API key
- Take the deployment name from the Foundry quickstart before the first call. Microsoft says to confirm the route and authentication header, and the pages reviewed do not give the name
- Keep each request within OpenRouter's 32,768-token context and send only fixed options, since the model is not intended for open-ended generation
- Measure latency and calibration on your own labelled cases before relying on Microsoft's latency and 'nine times out of 10' statements
Drex 1.5
- Call https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone with Authorization: Bearer nace_sk_..., and pin model drex-v1.5 rather than drex-latest in production.
- Stop on 402 insufficient_credit or 402 payment_required until credit is topped up or the unpaid invoice is paid.
- Retry 429 and 529 after retry-after-ms. On a 422 for an unknown model, use one of the ids the error message lists.
- Keep state below 131,072 tokens and the body below 1,048,576 bytes, and send at most 512 questions per request.
- Keep the key on a server. A key in browser code is exposed, and the /v1 routes send no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header.
- Check usage.input_tokens and the usage CSV after retries, since /v1/systemone documents no idempotency key.
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Microsoft-Decision-1 or Drex 1.5?
Drex 1.5 scores 69.7 (B) on agent readiness against Microsoft-Decision-1's 39 (E), and leads in every scored category.
Do Microsoft-Decision-1 and Drex 1.5 need an API key?
Microsoft-Decision-1 takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Drex 1.5 needs an API key.
Can an agent call Microsoft-Decision-1 and Drex 1.5 without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for Microsoft-Decision-1. Drex 1.5 has a hosted endpoint at https://console.nace.ai/v1/systemone.
Other comparisons with Microsoft-Decision-1 or Drex 1.5
- Celeris-1 Decision vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Celeris-1 Decision vs Drex 1.5
- Clef vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Clef vs Drex 1.5
- Laya vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Laya vs Drex 1.5
- Decider vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Decider vs Drex 1.5
- GLiClass vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- GLiClass vs Drex 1.5
- Kev vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Kev vs Drex 1.5
- Liquid d1 vs Microsoft-Decision-1
- Liquid d1 vs Drex 1.5
- Microsoft-Decision-1 vs OpenAI Decisions API
- Microsoft-Decision-1 vs pplx-decider
- Microsoft-Decision-1 vs Strands Decider 2B
- Microsoft-Decision-1 vs Jev
- Microsoft-Decision-1 vs Vela 2.0
- Drex 1.5 vs OpenAI Decisions API
- Drex 1.5 vs pplx-decider
- Drex 1.5 vs Strands Decider 2B
- Drex 1.5 vs Jev
- Drex 1.5 vs Vela 2.0
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/microsoft-decision-1-vs-nace-drex.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/microsoft-decision-1.json·/api/v1/tools/nace-drex.json - From a terminal
anchor compare microsoft-decision-1 nace-drex(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "microsoft-decision-1", "b": "nace-drex"}at/mcp, no key